Bad Things

by Michael Marshall

  “Fuck that,” she said. “I’m not just—”

  “You want to give these people two shots at recognizing someone? I have to find Kyle, knock the asshole out or feed him drugs if that’s what it takes to get him in a car. Then I’m paying the guys who’re looking for him, and we’re out of here.”

  “I can’t stay,” she said. “I cannot just sit here. What if Kyle comes back when you’re out looking for him? What if he leads the other guys back here?”

  I realized there was some sense in this, and also that she was telling the truth either way. She could not just stay here by herself.

  “If there’s anything in here you need to bring with you, get it now,” I said. “I’m going next door and then to get my car. I’ll be ten minutes. When I knock, come out quickly and get straight in the backseat. Okay?”

  She nodded, and handed over my room key.

  I let myself in next door, already wondering if there was anything I really needed to take, but thinking it would just confuse the maid if I left stuff behind. I was moving so quickly that I didn’t even notice that there was someone lying on the bed before I was halfway across the room.

  “Who the hell . . .”

  As my eyes accommodated to the darkness I realized I couldn’t see anything of the person’s face, because it was obscured by the large manila envelope lying over it.

  I took a step closer and recognized Ellen Robertson’s hair spread over the counterpane around her head, amid the blood.

  And then I saw the nail that had been driven through the envelope to hold it in place, sticking straight up from her forehead.

  CHAPTER 35

  For a moment I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t move, couldn’t even seem to breathe.

  I finally took a step forward and saw that the envelope had my name written on it, as if Ellen had been labeled with me. I took the end and moved it. There was initial resistance from where it had become stuck to her forehead with blood, but then I was able to swivel it around the fixed point of the nail.

  Ellen’s eyes were open.

  She was dead, though. Someone had cut right across her throat with a knife that had been big but not very sharp. Though blood was smeared down her neck and onto the bedspread, it was clear she hadn’t been killed in the room—or there would have been a far worse mess. Much, much worse. Someone had murdered her and brought her here. Judging by the lack of blood around the other wound, in the center of her forehead, the nail had been banged in well after her death, after she’d been laid in place.

  I found myself stepping backward and sitting on the other bed, suddenly and heavily. Ellen’s arms lay down by her sides. From what I could see of her hands there didn’t seem to be any cuts or broken nails, any signs of a struggle.

  Had she been drugged? Caught unaware, from behind? When I’d last seen her, yesterday afternoon, she’d been pretty vague. Concussed, I’d assumed, though I was beginning to wonder about anything that happened in this town. Maybe she’d just given up.

  What I did next depended on what I was going to do after that, so I did nothing. Thinking two steps ahead was beyond me for a little while.

  Eventually I checked in the bathroom, which I should have done right away. There was no one there.

  I went back and stood over Ellen’s body, as she stared up past me, toward the ceiling and beyond. I leaned over and gently tore the top of the envelope, down to where it was fixed by the nail, being careful not to brush against the protruding end, in the probably vain hope that there might be fingerprints on it, or that anyone would care that they happened not to be mine.

  When I’d got it away from Ellen’s face the envelope felt unevenly bulky, as if there was more than paper inside, but that would have to wait. I carried it to the door with me and took off the Do Not Disturb sign.

  I slipped outside and hung the sign on the handle, then walked stiff-legged to where the maid’s cart now stood, outside room 5.

  The door was ajar. I knocked on it. I heard the sound of shuffling feet from within, and then Courtney was standing peering up at me.

  “Hello,” she said.

  She looked mild and ethereal and harmless, and it was hard to conceive how she could exist in the same world as the thing lying on a bed four doors along.

  “Hey.” I smiled. “I’m in room nine.”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  “Thing is, I’m going to be here another night, and I’ve got papers spread all over the room. Work stuff. I just want to make sure they’re not disturbed.”

  “Okay,” she said again. “I’ll be careful.”

  “Great. Thank you.” I pretended to leave, but then stopped and turned back. “Actually, you know what? Maybe you should just forget my room for today.”

  She looked doubtful. “But what about your sheets?”

  “That’s okay. I’ll use the other bed.”

  “You’ll need fresh towels, though.”

  “I’ll just grab a couple from the cart, okay?”

  Courtney still didn’t look happy. “I don’t know. I’ve had people ask before, and Marie was really bugged when she found out, because, like, it turned out they’d made a total mess.”

  “It’s nothing like that. It’s just important these documents don’t get moved around, that’s all.”

  Everything seemed to take a very long time to be processed in this girl’s mind. “I just don’t want Marie pissed at me. I mean, really, really.”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t. Promise.”

  Something happened to her face then, and it was not good. She blinked, several times, rapidly, her cheeks creasing, face turning slightly away.

  I didn’t know how much longer I could stand there doing this, and so I got out my wallet and pulled out a twenty. “It would just make my life easier, that’s all,” I said, holding the bill out to her.

  She stared at it, her face still and cold.

  “I’ll leave your precious room alone, cocksucker,” she said. Then she turned on her heel and stormed back into room 5, slamming the door in my face, leaving me standing there with the twenty still in my hand.

  I walked back to 10 and knocked. Becki opened it immediately, clutching a brown paper bag and raring to go.

  “Change of plan,” I said, and gently pushed her back indoors.

  Becki perched on the end of the bed.

  “But . . . but . . . Are you kidding me? But . . . what the fuck? Why would someone do that?”

  It had taken a while to get her to accept there was a dead woman next door, and to understand that it was not the woman she’d seen talking to me on Kelly Street the previous night, but a whole different one. I did not fill in the backstory and I wouldn’t have told her about Ellen’s body at all, except there was no other way of convincing her that going out to find her boyfriend was no longer my foremost concern.

  “You didn’t hear anyone going in there?”

  “No, nothing. I mean, Kyle was shouting and banging like crazy, for a long time. So it could have been when . . . What are you going to do, John? Are you going to call the cops?”

  “No.”

  “Why? ” She looked up at me earnestly, as if she’d suddenly worked out the solution to everything. “You’ve got to call the cops. That’s what you do when this kind of shit happens, right?”

  “Not this time. The sheriff distrusts me and whoever put Ellen’s body there knows that. The sheriff may even be—”

  I stopped.

  “What? May be what?”

  “I’m just not calling the police.”

  Becki dropped her face into her hands. “So then we just go, right? We find Kyle and bug out of here.”

  I didn’t answer. Since finding Ellen’s body, I’d felt as if I was terribly behind. The more I tried to catch up with events the more it seemed like I was sliding to the side and getting lost in the trees.

  “Right? John? That’s what we do?”

  “The room is booked under my name and with my credit c
ard,” I said distantly. I could hear the clank of the maid’s trolley moving along the walkway of the motel, and I realized I should have asked the girl to leave this room alone, too. “Even if I moved the body, the blood may have seeped straight through to the mattress.”

  “So?”

  “So there’s no running away from this.”

  “There’s got to be.”

  I shook my head. No way of running from this or anything else.

  “Aren’t you going to open that?”

  She was looking at the thing I still held in my hand.

  “I don’t know.” I knew I had to look in the envelope but I did not want to. What information was worth delivering this way?

  But I slipped my thumb into the gap caused by tearing it away from the nail in Ellen’s forehead. There may or may not have been saliva evidence from whoever sealed it but I didn’t think it would ever come to that.

  When the envelope was open right across the top I held it over the bed and turned it upside down. An old gray T-shirt fell out. It was made of thin cotton and had been folded several times. I picked it up carefully. It smelled musty, as if it had lain somewhere undisturbed for quite a while.

  “The hell’s that?”

  I wasn’t completely sure until I checked the label and confirmed that the shirt had come from the Human Race, a store near Pioneer Square in Seattle that I’d used once in a while, back in the old days.

  “I think,” I said, “that it’s mine. When I lived here I used to go for runs in the woods. This looks like something I used to wear.”

  I realized there was something inside the shirt. Something hard and unyielding. I put the T-shirt back down on the bed and carefully unfolded it.

  In the middle was a piece of jewelry, a sturdy silver bracelet half an inch wide, with small pieces of turquoise inset at regular intervals. I recognized it immediately, though it had become very tarnished, and though I had thought it was lost.

  “Oh Christ,” I said.

  I moved it to one side, to get to the final object. A piece of thick paper, about four inches square. I turned it over. It was a Polaroid, taken somewhere with very low light. Someone had held a flashlight and shone it straight at a face, while taking the picture. A photograph of Carol.

  “Who’s that woman?” Becki said, her voice not far from hysteria. “John, what the fuck is all this?”

  “That’s my ex-wife,” I said.

  “You’ve got a wife?”

  “I did.”

  I picked up the bangle again, turning it over in my fingers. On the inside, hidden amid the mottled grays of discoloration, was an inscription I knew would be there, and which I recognized well:

  J2

  “John? There’s something else in here.”

  I turned sluggishly to see that Becki was peering inside the T-shirt.

  “You want me to get it?”

  The truth was I didn’t know whether I did, but she went ahead anyway, pulling out a piece of paper that had been neatly folded over twice.

  She handed it to me and I unfolded it. At the top were the standard log lines of an e-mail, with a date from three years ago. The message said:

  Yes, it’s me. I *know* we’re not suposed to be in contact but I’ve had WAY to much wiine withstanding Bill’s clients (still yakking it up downstairs) and I wish I was somewher being touched by you instead. I’m goig to feel crap about this tomorow but I’m pressing the button anyway. Don’t reply because I wont answer. And *fuck you* for making me feel like this, you asshole :-) xox

  I’d never seen the message before. But I knew who it was from, and to.

  “What is it? What’s it say?”

  “Nothing,” I said, folding it again. I grabbed the shirt and the bracelet and the picture and stuffed it all back into the envelope.

  “It didn’t look like nothing. You look like you’ve seen a fucking ghost.”

  “Becki, shut up.”

  She reared back as if I’d slapped her. I hadn’t meant it the way it sounded. I just couldn’t think, couldn’t put the pieces together in my head. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Our heads turned together then, at the sound of a door opening. But it was not the door to the room we were in. “What the hell was that?”

  “Sounded like . . . John, it sounded like someone going into your room.”

  I opened the door and stepped out. There were no cars in the lot. The maid’s cart was right where it had been, back down near room 5. The door to my room was open about an inch, however.

  I gently pushed it. It swung open slowly to reveal someone standing in the room, close to the desk. Courtney.

  I walked in, not knowing what I was going to do about this. I heard Becki enter the room behind me, then the sharp intake of her breath.

  The maid heard it, too, and turned her head. “Oh, hi,” she said, and returned to what she’d been doing.

  Her voice was back to the way I’d heard it every time before, as if she was on a heavy dose of meds. She held a dusting cloth in her hand. The wastebasket from under the desk had been moved to the middle of the floor, ready to be emptied.

  I took another step toward her. Becki was becalmed in the doorway, staring at the body on the bed.

  “I asked you not to come in here,” I said.

  “Oh, I know,” the maid said. “But, you know, I thought about it? And I really don’t want to get on Marie’s bad side. I need this job.” She paused. “And anyway—there’s no papers here.”

  “What?”

  “You said I wasn’t supposed to disturb anything. But there’s nothing here. Which is kind of weird.”

  “That’s weird?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, going back to wiping the desk in slow, pointless circles. “Was it, like, a joke, or something? I don’t always get jokes.”

  “I was concerned,” I said, pointing toward the bed, “about what you might think about what’s lying over there.”

  “Oh, that,” she said, glancing over at Ellen’s body. “I already knew about that.”

  “You knew about it?”

  “Of course.” She looked at me as if I was being obtuse. “How do you think he got it in here?” She reached in the pocket of her housecoat and pulled out a large ring of keys. “Duh.”

  “But . . .”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be our little secret,” she said, and went back to dusting.

  “Who was it? Who put her in here?”

  “I don’t know,” she said apologetically. “I’m sorry. He didn’t have a face.”

  Becki was no longer looking at the body, but staring at the maid.

  “We’re leaving now,” I told her.

  “You got it.”

  Courtney held up her hand. “Oh, wait,” she said. “I was supposed to give you this. Sorry. I don’t think very clearly sometimes.”

  She fished in her coat pocket again and held something out toward me. I took it.

  It was another Polaroid. This time it showed a jetty stretching out over a lake, in fading light. It was the jetty near our old house. A house in which it would now be very dark, and where, should you wish to photograph someone, you would need to shine a flashlight at their face.

  “Oh no,” I said, and started to run.

  Becki tried to follow but I’d left her behind before I even got to the road. I heard her calling after me for a while but then it was drowned out by the sound of my panting, and the thudding of blood in my ears.

  I fumbled the keys out as I ran across the bank’s parking lot and headed straight for my car, and I didn’t hear the men coming out from behind the blue truck until it was far too late.

  CHAPTER 36

  When Kristina had got back to her apartment just before dawn, she trudged straight to the shower and stood under it, staying there long after the hot water had run out. It finally got too cold to bear and she turned it off, but remained huddled in the corner of the tiled cubicle, her face in her hands.

  She didn’t feel any cleaner.


  She felt as if she had remembered every bad thing she had ever done, every bad thing anyone had ever done. She felt as if they were in her hair, under her fingernails, coating the lining of her stomach and crawling through her veins. She felt as if were she to spit, or throw up, or bleed, then particles of these deeds would be there, like tiny, twisting worms.

  And the worst of it all was that she couldn’t be sure that feeling this way was unpleasant.

  She had known this potential all her life, and running around the world had not made any difference in the end. Suddenly, last night, she had undone decades of resistance—like deliberately stepping in front of a car. A story told to her over coffee in a pizza restaurant— by a man she really barely knew—had flipped a switch she’d had her finger hovering over ever since she’d been back in Black Ridge.

  No. It wasn’t that simple.

  Of course not. And she ought to know better than to blame others for what she’d done. Nobody forced people to behave in the ways they did. With a few sad exceptions, most people did what they did. They chose their paths through the woods, even if those choices were sometimes shaped by who they were, and what had been done to them.

  Done to Kristina, for example, on the night her parents had brought her to the turnoff on Route 61 a little after nine-thirty in the evening. It was very dark, and cold. Her mother was in the passenger seat, not speaking. Her father was driving, doing—as usual—what he was told.

  Kristina was in the back, by herself, and she was already afraid. Though no one had said what was about to occur, she was beginning to get an inkling. Why else bring her out all this way into the forest, this late, on a school night? Why had the neighbors been told she was away, staying with friends?

  Her dad took the forestry track that skirted close to the Robertsons’ land, driving deeper and deeper into the woods. Eventually he stopped the car and got out. He walked a few yards from the vehicle, until he was invisible in the darkness except for the firefly light at the end of his cigarette. Five years later he’d be dead of lung cancer.